I’ll break this post up into three parts: my local area, my school, and my first trip.
I am attending EBS University in Oestrich-Winkel, which is kind of a misnomer because the main campus is actually in Hattenheim. However, there is a building in Oestrich-Winkel. I live in a tiny town called Aulhausen. Technically Aulhausen is part of the city of Rudesheim, like how a neighborhood is part of a bigger city. The nearest town that Germans know is Wiesbaden, and the nearest town that everyone knows is Frankfurt?– it’s a one hour train ride east of me. The region is called the Rhein Valley and is world renowned for its wine: a dry sweet white wine you can find under the label Riesling or Rheingau. There are hills everywhere here and I am never more than 2km from the Rhein. The hills are almost completely covered in vineyards. I usually hate running but I enjoy it here because of the view, terrain, and delicious grapes I can snack on. The towns are ancient and have tight winding streets.?If you visit the region, Rudesheim is a a must see. It looks like what you imagine a small touristy German town would look like plus it has a chair lift that carries you above the town and vineyards to the top of the hills for a peaceful walk through the forest. Wiesbaden is the nearest modern town and has a futbol/soccer team that is fun to watch for 3.5 Euro per game. I’ve gone to two wine festivals — one in Rudesheim and one in Mainz. Both had all sorts of local wine, music, food, and trinkets. If you’re more of a beer fan, Pilsners are famous here. The most common is Bittburger but I also see a lot of wheat bears (weizen bier) such as Paulaner?Hefe-Weizen. I have had no negative experiences with locals. All the ones I have talked to are helpful and friendly. Almost all Germans speak English, so not knowing the language well has caused?few?problems for me so far. It would be difficult to be a vegetarian here since almost every menu item has meat, especially pork.
Aulhausen
Rudesheim (left) and the Rhein
EBS is a small private school mainly focused on business/management and law. The study part of my study abroad experience has been surprising so far since the classes are on arbitrarily dates with no consistent week to week schedule. Lectures can be as long as 6 hours and I have already had a couple Saturday classes. The schedule is good for traveling, though. I had seven days in a row with no classes so I took a trip to Amsterdam and Copenhagen. There are about 300 international students from around the world out of the 1,500 total students, but?I haven’t met many Germans because they mainly stick together. I like how many international students there are because I have learned so much about different cultures that I didn’t expect to learn about. I have two roommates (one Irish and one from Montreal) in a nice three story house. I also started playing ice hockey with guys stationed at the US military base located in Wiesbaden. I’ve never played before but it is so much fun!
My trip to Amsterdam and Copenhagen was fantastic. I went with my Canadian roommate and our train left from Frankfurt at 5 AM. We stayed up overnight in Frankfurt and then took six different trains over six hours before arriving in Amsterdam. The entire city is intertwined with canals, the streets are made of cobblestone, and there are literally bikes everywhere. The city has so much to do; we spent three days and nights there and never got bored. We stayed in a hostel near the red light district and walked everywhere. The city is small enough that you can walk across in 30 minutes. The must see items are the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Heineken Brewery. We then flew to Copenhagen and arrived around 8 PM. Copenhagen is just as beautiful as Amsterdam. However, there isn’t as much to do. I highly recommend visiting one of the castles or palaces — they are magnificent. The Carlsberg Brewery was comprehensive?and I enjoyed learning about their history and brewing processes. The highlight was standing on the spire of a church in Christiana looking over the entire city. Both cities were small enough to walk around and had canals flowing through them, but Copenhagen was much less touristy, which I liked. The downside of Copenhagen is they use a different currency and the prices there are ridiculous. Good luck getting lunch for less than $10. I loved both and can’t tell you which I liked more. If you’re planning on visiting Europe, you only need to see one of the two. We took three trains and a ferry back, which took 14 hours!
Next post will be about Oktoberfest and hopefully another two-city vacation.